There are many many of us Jews that don't feel that our own safety depends on the control or suppression of others. While many of the refugees who came to Palestine as pioneers after the Holocaust had intentions to live peacefully in harmony with the Palestinians*, almost every action of the Israeli government since it was founded has been to treat Palestinians just as badly as we had been treated in Europe.
The ultimate consequence of this has been to harm and dispossess several generations of Palestinians which is extremely effective at ensuring they continue to resent Israel's existence and feel that they must do anything they can by any means necessary to ensure the survival of their people. If Israel can't exist peacefully with Palestinians, what gives Jews the greater "right" to the land than they have? How can we go from being refugees with no safe place to go, to violently forcing the exact same situation upon another people just for the gall of wanting to continue to exist with their families on their own ancestral land?
Even if I was a Zionist I would think that the last 6 months were creating long term curse on the country of Israel by creating a whole new generation of Palestinians with nothing but rage for Israel and nothing to lose. You can look at even the most sanitized accounts of the assault on Gaza see absolute cruelty on the part of the IDF as well as no concern for human life or international law.
(*) For anyone interested in the politics of Israel's founding, I highly recommend I. F. Stone's book Underground to Palestine about the heroic (as he tells it) journey of Jewish refugees trying to reach Palestine in 1946. In 1978 it was republished with 2 new essays from him. One about how Zionism was hijacked by Jews with no regard for Palestinians' rights or well-being, and the other about how it has become completely impossible to have rational conversations that are critical of Israel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_to_Palestine
#Israel #Palestine #Zionism #ceasefire #refugees #Gaza #FreePalestine
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in reply to Ruby Sinreich • • •Thing is ... Lost before WW2 and the Holocaust, as Balfor's letter to Lord Rothschild in 1917 shows, Palestine had been 'promised' to the "Jewish Zionists" as a place to live and make a national home for the Jewish people ... on the understanding they were not to oust the Palestinians in any way.
Not only has every Israeli government since not keep that understanding, but they've labelled every single person who spoke out against their harsh treatment of the Palestinians as Anti-Semitic.
And those of us who have been around since WW2 have seen the draconian suppression of human rights, the beatings,, the imprisonment, the killings ... and how the entire western world let them get away with it.
Fact is, during WW2 people who resisted invaders/torturers/killers were admired, heroic ... now they're called terrorists.
Fact is, this "last 6 months" is not new ... nobody just ups and starts killing children ... the self-proclaimed 'right' to do so built up by how much they've been allowed to get away with over the past three quarters of a century.
And for some
... show moreThing is ... Lost before WW2 and the Holocaust, as Balfor's letter to Lord Rothschild in 1917 shows, Palestine had been 'promised' to the "Jewish Zionists" as a place to live and make a national home for the Jewish people ... on the understanding they were not to oust the Palestinians in any way.
Not only has every Israeli government since not keep that understanding, but they've labelled every single person who spoke out against their harsh treatment of the Palestinians as Anti-Semitic.
And those of us who have been around since WW2 have seen the draconian suppression of human rights, the beatings,, the imprisonment, the killings ... and how the entire western world let them get away with it.
Fact is, during WW2 people who resisted invaders/torturers/killers were admired, heroic ... now they're called terrorists.
Fact is, this "last 6 months" is not new ... nobody just ups and starts killing children ... the self-proclaimed 'right' to do so built up by how much they've been allowed to get away with over the past three quarters of a century.
And for some media to claim Israelis don't know what is really happening can only be due to deliberate ignorance in this day of The Internet ... They know ... as shown by other media ... Israeli soldiers using this latest 'uprising' to boast about their murder of civilians and children over the internet, and citizens deliberately taunting thirsty starving children ...
I'm sure it's sad for you and the many Jews outside Israel who do care, finally seeing what they have been turning a blind eye to for decades ... but it's time.
Ruby Sinreich
in reply to MyView • • •Alexandra Lanes
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in reply to Alexandra Lanes • • •@ajlanes
That's common among media that supports and encourages their government's bad policies and very bad behaviour ...
We've had the same thing over the past quarter century from a media reduced to three owners ... one being Murdoch and the other two being well known CONservative recipients of Mate$ Rate$ ...
No such thing as a Free Press in many countries now.